Healthy self-esteem is having the confidence in your ability to think and cope with the basic challenges of life. It is having the belief to be successful and happy and to feel worthy, deserving and entitled to assert our needs and wants and to enjoy the fruits of our efforts. Trusting your own mind and to know that you are worthy of happiness is the essence of good self-esteem. We have a basic human need to be wanted, noticed and included. We naturally want to contribute, to be of value, and make a difference. Our esteem develops from our experiences and relationships from birth. It is shaped by the opinions and experiences in the family, at school and from friendships in wider society. No single event or person determines your level of self-esteem; it develops over time and can change with time and events.

Self-esteem is an opinion and not a fact. As we grow up we absorb the voices of people who were significant to us and internalise them to become our self-beliefs. These beliefs formed in childhood are usually biased and inaccurate because it is based on a child’s-eye view. They are likely formed on the basis of misunderstandings about experiences because you had no adult knowledge with which to understand properly what was going on. For instance, we may criticise ourselves in their sharp tones and make the same comparisons with other people in the same way that they did.

Experiences later in life can damage our self-esteem such as workplace bullying, abusive relationships, persistent stress or traumatic events. Our materialist world, where people continually compare themselves with those around them, highlights our insecurities and often leads us to feel negative about ourselves and the way we live. We lose sight of the value of our own individuality and then feel inadequate and unsatisfied. We are also constantly judging and evaluating ourselves, often in comparison with others and all too often comparison slips into competition and others become the yardstick by which we evaluate ourselves as good or bad, competent or inadequate.

The reality is we are all different. Each of us has strengths and limitations which we need to learn about and learn to live with. There are aspects of our behaviour and appearance we may seek to change or develop, but a sense of self is also based on self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Self-esteem is central to who we are and central to the process of counselling. Change might mean taking a hard look at yourself and feeling strong enough to change the things you do not like. Change is not always easy. It means stepping into the unknown and taking a risk. Working to improve your self-esteem takes time and effort. It requires courage and honesty to confront things in yourself you do not like but long-term it is a worthwhile task which should help you feel better about yourself and your life. When you value your own uniqueness and start to feel good about some aspects of yourself you can allow yourself to be more realistic about your goals.